Bon Jovi delivers on expectations, brings surprises

Click to see a gallery of photos from Bon Jovi's Bridgestone Arena show (this image: Mandy Lunn/The Tennessean).

“(Nashville) is a very important city to me,” singer Jon Bon Jovi said from the Bridgestone Arena stage Wednesday night, as his surnamed band’s Circle Tour made its way to Music City. “We’ve been coming here for a long time and have a lot of good friends here.”

Bon Jovi recently spent a healthy share of time in Nashville, writing and recording much of 2007 album Lost Highway. The singer said he didn’t plan for his band to follow up that album so soon with 2009’s The Circle, but that the state of the world over the last 18 months made him feel like he had no other choice.

“We have to sift through it all and make it make sense,” he said. “I guess what I’m trying to say is this is more the ‘we’ decade than the ‘me’ decade.”

The Circle reflects that sentiment, and the band worked flawless versions of five of its 12 songs into their 23-song set, including current single “Superman Tonight” and “When We Were Beautiful,” which the singer introduced as “one of the songs I’m most proud of.” The crowd responded favorably, but the older hits still seemed to connect most with the near-16,000 people in the audience.
Wednesday’s show kicked off with “Blood on Blood” from 1988’s New Jersey, and one of the first of many massive sing-alongs came two songs later as Bon Jovi launched into late-’80s hit “You Give Love a Bad Name.” (An extended version of “Bad Medicine,” “It’s My Life” and “We Got It Going On” earned similar degrees of crowd participation.)

Even as the band worked through hits from decades past, their stage show brought out all the modern elements fans have come to expect: An LED video wall punctuated the songs, morphing from one enormous screen to six rotating ones to a disjointed curtain of about 100 mini-screens, and a small, circular walkway linked up to the main stage via removable bridges.

Fans expecting the Bon Jovi-standard high-energy performance weren’t let down there, either. Guitarist Richie Sambora, often strapping on a double-necked, woodgrain Taylor guitar, cranked his signature heavy guitar tone, singer Bon Jovi bounding from one side of the stage to the other flashing smiles, punching the air, swiveling his hips and waving his hands. The front man’s energy kept the bulk of the crowd on their feet with their hands in the air throughout the set.

But the evening wasn’t without its surprises. The band recently brought debut single “Runaway” back into their show after a years-long absence, and for the first time in Bon Jovi history they invited drummer Tico Torres to sit in on percussion during their acoustic songs — a show-highlight set of tunes that included Bon Jovi/Sambora duet “I’ll Be There for You” and a new, slower arrangement of “Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night” that showcased the band’s harmonies.

Bon Jovi kicked the power back on and closed out the show with encore performances of fan staples such as “Wanted Dead or Alive” and “Livin' on a Prayer,” the latter earning the loudest applause of the night.

“Thank you guys for coming out on a work night,” Jon Bon Jovi said. “We’ve been good friends for over a quarter of a century, and I know I wouldn’t be here without you.”